No Ordinary Joes

by Larry Colton

  When the crew returned to Surabaya after a couple of days in Malang, Gordy was overwhelmed by the stench that greeted him upon reboarding the ship, a foul brew of sweat, diesel oil, and cooking fumes. He’d become adjusted to it while on patrol, but returning to the ship after the fresh air of the mountains had been a shock. Javanese laborers had been brought in to scrub the whole boat, and the mattresses had been sent out for cleaning, but the odor remained. Gordy dreaded the prospect of going out on patrol again.

  With the war less than two months old, news was still sketchy and often inaccurate. Rumors ran wild. Most of the news that filtered down to Gordy was discouraging. Guam, Wake Island, and Manila had fallen. Singapore was under attack. So was Indonesia. A couple of days after the Sculpin left Java, Japanese planes heavily bombed Surabaya and Malang. It was assumed that Japanese forces would soon steamroll their way right into Australia.

  When Gordy had first signed up for the submarine service, he’d been told of the closeness and camaraderie of the crew, a band-of-brothers sort of togetherness. But so far, even though he’d just completed a war patrol, he didn’t share that feeling. He didn’t even know the names of half the men on the ship. He might see them at meals, or in their bunks, but he really didn’t have any interaction with them.

  On February 17, a convoy was spotted. As Chappelle prepared the ship for a surface attack, they were spotted. “Prepare to dive!” he ordered.

  As the Sculpin passed 225 feet, Gordy heard a depth charge detonate, then another and another, each one getting closer. The ship shook violently. To keep from getting tossed to the deck, he held on to a pipe. There were two more depth charges, each of them rocking the ship. Lightbulbs burst. Pipes sprung leaks.

  In the maneuvering room, depth control was lost, and the Sculpin plunged to 275 feet, then 325. Her maximum red-line depth was 250; anything below that could cause the pressure to pop the hull and create massive, unstoppable leaks. The captain struggled to get the ship under control. The rudder and stern planes froze.

  At 345 feet, the captain brought the ship to an up angle and cut to two-thirds speed on the screws, bringing a halt to the ship’s plunge. Everyone on board breathed a momentary sigh of relief. But while they had been fighting for depth control, a fire had broken out in the control room; salt water had leaked in and shorted electrical wiring. Black smoke filled the control room. Quickly, an extinguisher was used to put out the fire, but the smoke made breathing difficult.

  Soon the leakage was stopped and the Sculpin was eased back up to 250 feet. The rudder and planes began working again. But from other parts of the ship, reports of broken gauges, grounded motors, and electrical shorts reached the control room. They were having trouble slowing down the propellers. At this speed, the Japanese would surely pick them up on their sound gear.

  The chief electrician climbed into the electrical cubicle and removed a nut that had come loose and fallen off, jamming the controller. That slowed the screws, cutting down the noise and reducing the risk of being detected. Soon the depth charges stopped, and the convoy moved south.

  A few days later, the Sculpin spotted a merchant ship, but missed with two torpedoes, then a few days after that they fired at a large destroyer, missing once again. The destroyer turned and came after them, dropping five depth charges, the first two coming very close, shaking the ship so badly that the starboard shaft began to squeal and give away their location.

  Suddenly, Gordy heard a noise coming from the aft part of the ship—a loud, metallic banging against the hull. Bam. Bam. Bam. The noise was sure to give away their position, if it hadn’t already.

  He heard loud voices. “Somebody grab him! Quick!” Then there was the sound of a struggle.

  In the aft torpedo room, one of the crew had been overcome with panic and the crushing fear of dying at the bottom of the ocean 8,000 miles from home. The man had picked up a wrench and begun wildly banging on the side of the hull, getting in several clean hits before the men around him tackled him and pinned him to the deck. To keep him under control, they dragged him to the mess area and bound and gagged him.

  The depth charging stopped, and the Sculpin escaped to calmer waters and received a message to move southeast of Timor and head for Australia for desperately needed repairs to men and equipment damaged by the depth charging.

  Later, Captain Chappelle would write in his report about the repeated failure of the torpedoes: “If the truth be told, the Commanding Officer was so demoralized and disheartened from repeated misses he had little stomach for further action until an analysis could be made and a finger put on the deficiency or deficiencies responsible and corrective action taken.”

  For Gordy, his first two war patrols had been worse than anything he could’ve imagined. He wished he’d never volunteered.

  Part Three

  ASSIGNMENT: GRENADIER

  9

  Chuck Vervalin

  USS Grenadier

  Chuck was eager to end this patrol aboard the Gudgeon. It was the sub’s fifty-third day at sea. The previous three patrols had been fifty, fifty-two, and twenty days in duration, and to this point in the war—August 1942—no other American submarine had spent as much time on patrol, or survived so many depth charges. The Gudgeon’s previous patrol had been at Midway Island in early June, one of twelve subs assigned to protect the island from an expected Japanese invasion that had been detected by American code breakers. The battle turned out to be the first decisive American victory in the war, with four Japanese carriers sunk and over 300 planes lost.

  Chuck stood on the deck as the ship eased into the harbor in Fremantle, a small town located fifteen miles south of Perth on the west coast of Australia. This last patrol had been a harrowing one. With ten other subs, the Gudgeon had been patrolling the waters west of Truk, an island to the north of New Guinea. After a failed attack on two large transports, they were counterattacked by two destroyers that dropped a total of sixty depth charges, many of them rattling the ship. A severe storm was the only thing that saved them. Leaks occurred throughout the ship, and in the words of the executive officer, Dusty Dornin, “the crew was shaken up considerably.” It would be Chuck’s last patrol aboard the Gudgeon.

  In early 1942, the people of Australia faced the danger of invasion from Japanese forces rapidly pushing south. These fears intensified with the fall of Britain’s supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore and the capture of 15,000 Australian troops. Then, on February 19, Japanese planes bombed Darwin, on the northern coast, an attack seen as a prelude to a full-scale invasion.

  With most of their military already stationed overseas, Australians knew they were vulnerable to a war fought on their home soil. Word spread of the Japanese atrocities in China and Korea, with millions slaughtered. The country had unprotected coastlines and no hope for protection from its motherland, Britain, which was fighting for its own survival; nor could they count on the Dutch, who had already lost their homeland to the Germans and were seeing their resistance crumbling in the Dutch East Indies. To protect against an invasion, citizens of Perth and Fremantle did what they could in setting up a defense, erecting barbed-wire entanglements on the beaches, digging slit trenches, blackening streetlights, and installing air-raid alarms.

  Australia now looked to America as the “keystone” of the effort to stop the Japanese advance. But the Americans were battle scarred and in retreat as well, having been run out of the Philippines and forced to depend heavily on a submarine fleet armed with inexperienced leadership, exhausted crews, and defective torpedoes.

  The arrival on March 3, 1942, of the submarine tender Holland, followed by Gordy Cox’s ship, the Sculpin, inaugurated Fremantle as the U.S. Navy’s primary submarine base for the rest of the war, a place for the Navy to repair damage, assess losses, heal wounds, and find temporary relief from the stress of war. In addition to a good harbor and sufficient piers, Fremantle had the advantage of being outside the range of land-based Japanese aircraft.

  The American
sailors were universally welcomed in Perth and Fremantle, greeted with huge relief, gratitude, and an almost starry-eyed ecstasy. The citizens took pleasure in seeing American uniforms on the street. As more and more submariners arrived, hotels, taxis, and cabarets all thrived. To house the sailors on leave, the Navy rented out entire hotels. Organizations fell all over themselves to treat the Americans well. A giant Fourth of July celebration was held at the Perth Zoo.

  Within a few short months, the Americans had become a pervasive presence. About the only place this wasn’t recognized was in the newspapers; because of security issues, the government was censoring coverage of the American arrival, and most of the time the press pretended the Americans hadn’t arrived. But an article in the Fremantle Sentinel titled “The Anglo-Saxon Race—America and Australia Unite” defied the censorship:

  The Americans are well-liked here, and on all sides favorable comments can be heard. The recent arrivals are a fine type of men, particularly well set up, and also smartly uniformed. The absence of heavy drinking, and also the fact that they have friendly manners, these things are winning for them much appreciation. These men are certainly a good type, well paid and mostly skilled men.

  The Australian press made every attempt to paint the notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority, repeatedly warning about the “Yellow Peril” and the savagery of the “myopic, slant-eyed Asians.” Nobody was more impressed with the superiority of these newly arrived men than Australian women; it was widely known that each new ship was greeted by a welcoming chorus of admiring females.

  With so many Australian boyfriends, husbands, and lovers gone to war, the women had been deprived of local male company, and the newcomers personified the Hollywood dream: they were described as handsome and worldly, a mixture of vulnerability and brashness, usually somewhat courtly in their manners, somehow less crude than the Australian men they were used to. Plus, the Americans had money to burn. The wartime pay of submariners was three or four times the pay of local men, and the sailors didn’t hesitate to spend it, treating the women to fancy presents and expensive entertainment. The ultimate dream for many of these women was to hook one of these men and eventually move to America.

  Relationships quickly developed, ranging from the intensely romantic to the coldly commercial. There were six brothels on Rose Street in Perth, but unlike in Hawaii, attractive local women were available and eager. Most of the men visiting the brothels were older sailors, the guys Chuck liked to say “didn’t want to waste time going out with nice girls to sip tea.”

  Sexual liaisons became common knowledge, and it didn’t take long for conventional morality to crack under the American presence. Married women, their husbands off to war, also seemed eager to participate in this new social order. Perth/Fremantle was described as a living lab for demonstrating that during wartime, inhibitions break down.

  Some of the Americans exhibited a self-confidence that bordered on arrogance, but the Australians were willing to tolerate the occasional bad behavior and bravado. Of course, not all of the servicemen were just about sex and romance. Most of the men were homesick and lonely and sometimes scared, looking for nothing more than the warmth of human contact; many were invited to private homes for a meal or an evening of talk. Chuck met a pretty blond girl from South Perth who invited him to her parents’ house. He appreciated the home-cooked meal, but he also felt a little guilty because he was really only interested in the girl for, as he put it, “shacking up.”

  For Chuck, the two-week leave in Perth had been a wild time. Most of the Gudgeon’s crew had stayed at the Wentworth Hotel downtown, and he spent his nights drinking and chasing women, amazed at how many attractive and available women he’d been able to meet. During the day, he usually went to the beach or to the racetrack (he still harbored hopes of getting involved in harness racing after the war). Another daytime diversion for the sailors was going out in the countryside to hunt kangaroo. Chuck tried it once, but he never even got close enough to a kangaroo to fire his Navy rifle. But he still fared better than one of his crewmates, who opened fire on something moving behind a thicket, only to discover he’d just killed a local farmer’s prize horse.

  * * *

  By October 1942, Chuck had been in Australia for two happy months. He’d transferred off the Gudgeon to the Pelius, a submarine tender. He was serving on a relief crew responsible for repairing the subs that came into port, readying them to go back into battle while their crews went on leave. Being on a relief crew was a common rotation for men who’d been under the stress of patrol, giving them a break before sending them back into combat. Chuck’s job was helping to overhaul the diesel engines. He was enjoying the respite, but he was also getting anxious to go back out on patrol, back to a higher sense of contribution to the war effort.

  But on this day, he wasn’t thinking about torpedoes or evading depth charges. He was fixated on spending the evening with nineteen-year-old Gwen Haughey, a wavy- and dark-haired, brown-eyed beauty he’d met a few days earlier when he and a shipmate were strolling through an arcade in Perth. A private in the Royal Australian Women’s Army who served as a messenger and secretary to the base commander, Gwen had been walking with a friend, and even though she was wearing her unflattering green wool Army uniform, Chuck thought she was just about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. He got her number, and when he called to ask her out to a movie, she accepted, requesting that he pick her up at her house so that her family could meet him.

  Gwen was the middle child of three sisters. Her mother was from England and, to help the family get through the tough times, often took in laundry and ironing. Gwen had warned Chuck about her father, a strict Irish Catholic and an ex-rugby player who’d owned racehorses before the Depression but who went broke because, according to him, the Filipino jockeys he’d hired had lost all his money by throwing races. Now he traveled the countryside shearing sheep. He had always closely monitored Gwen’s dating, regularly taking her to the neighborhood priest for lectures on morality and proper behavior, and once, when he spotted her laughing and having a good time with a boy from the neighborhood, he gave her a whipping—with a whip. Chuck was prepared to be on his best behavior.

  Like most Australian girls her age, Gwen was fairly ignorant about America. Most of what she knew had come from Hollywood films, which portrayed a mostly rich, glamorous lifestyle, with no images of the grinding poverty that Chuck and many of the other sailors roaming the streets of Perth had lived through. Her first impression of Chuck fit the image—handsome and well mannered, nicely paid, a young man willing to risk his life to save her country from the Japanese. She’d heard stories about the atrocities at Nanking and that the Japanese were cannibals, celebrating their conquests by ceremonially eating some of the vanquished. For her, these brave American men, risking their lives, were heroes.

  Chuck approached the front door of Gwen’s house in Victoria Park, a working-class section of Perth. He checked to make sure his uniform was just right, desperately wanting to make a good impression on Gwen’s parents.

  Entering the house, Chuck introduced himself to her family. From his fellow sailors, he’d learned the advantage of showing up with gifts to sweeten the first impression. Perhaps as much as anything, the Americans’ long-term impact in Australia would be measured in what they introduced into Australian culture—Coca-Cola, hamburgers, peanut butter, spaghetti and meatballs, and American-brand cigarettes. To Gwen’s sisters, Chuck gave chewing gum; to her father he presented a cigar and a 5-cent pack of Lucky Strikes; to her mother he gave candy.

  As Gwen went to get a sweater, her mother followed her into a back bedroom. A moment later they both emerged wearing sweaters, both of them moving toward the door. Chuck looked puzzled. He held the door open for them, quickly getting the picture—Gwen’s mother would be joining them on their first date.

  They went to see Cary Grant in Penny Serenade. Chuck ushered Gwen to their seats; her mother took a seat two rows behind them. Along with everybody else in the th
eater at the start of the movie, they stood for the singing of “God Save the Queen.” He could feel her mother’s eyes boring into him from behind.

  After the movie, they headed straight home. On the front porch, Gwen’s mother stood right next to her. Chuck politely thanked them for a nice evening, then watched as they retreated inside. Clearly, this wasn’t the first date he’d imagined. Still, he was totally smitten, and determined to see Gwen again.

  It had been three months since that first date, and he was still head over heels. Being in love was a new experience for Chuck. He’d been infatuated with Irene back in high school, but that was kid stuff compared with this. At night he went to sleep thinking about Gwen, and when he opened his eyes in the morning, she was the first thing on his mind. Their time apart always dragged. They didn’t get to see each other for fifty-one days at the start of 1943; he was in the Java Sea on his first patrol aboard the Grenadier, the sub he’d been assigned to after serving on the sub tender Pelius for a month. He would lie in his bunk thinking about places they’d been together, especially Leighton Beach and its idyllic, long white beach and gentle, warm surf, where they’d gone several times. Sometimes when he thought about her, he actually felt a chemical rush. And this wasn’t just lust. They’d finally shared their first kiss, but Gwen had made it very clear that she would remain a virgin until her wedding night. That was fine with Chuck. He’d even talked with Gwen’s commanding officer, who’d requested to see him to ask him his intentions with Gwen. He assured the lieutenant that his motives were honorable. He’d told his friends that she was the “marrying kind,” and besides, on some of the nights he wasn’t with her—she didn’t get much time off—he had other opportunities to satisfy his physical needs. On a couple of occasions, he even had dates with two women the same night, getting off a streetcar with one to meet another on the corner. He rationalized this behavior the same way many of his fellow servicemen did—he could die tomorrow, so why hold back? After all, he and Gwen weren’t officially engaged or anything. In fact, the subject of marriage hadn’t been brought up yet. Nor had he actually uttered those three little words.